


The Labyrinth of Stars

by RisingAnarchy



Series: Like The Pearl of Dew [3]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autistic Spencer Reid, Depression, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Eating Disorders, Episode: s02e15 Revelations, Gen, Hurt Spencer Reid, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Jason Gideon is bad at giving advice, Kidnapped Spencer Reid, Mental Health Issues, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Protective Aaron Hotchner, Protective Derek Morgan, References to Depression, Sad, Sad Spencer Reid, Spencer Reid Whump, Spencer Reid has an eating disorder, Worried Derek Morgan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:40:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RisingAnarchy/pseuds/RisingAnarchy
Summary: There’s something different about looking up at the sky and not being blinded by the sky’s torturous tears. In fact, it’s almost worse when the one’s looking down at the world is the stars, bright and brilliant and hopeful. But they are just as cruel as the rain, with cackling laughter and how they find joy in the pain of others. They are infinite. And maybe that, in the end, is why they are so terrifying to stare at.Or; Tobias Hankel takes away Spencer’s ability to live normally as he slowly spirals. And though he thought he wouldn’t be alone, he finds himself abandoned by his family while at his worst.
Relationships: Aaron Hotchner & Spencer Reid, Derek Morgan & Spencer Reid, Emily Prentiss & Spencer Reid, Jason Gideon & Spencer Reid, Jennifer "JJ" Jareau & Spencer Reid, Jennifer "JJ" Jareau/William LaMontagne Jr., Penelope Garcia & Spencer Reid, Spencer Reid & David Rossi, Spencer Reid & The BAU Team
Series: Like The Pearl of Dew [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1828207
Comments: 46
Kudos: 242





	1. Of Sinners and The Devil

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of my favorites out of the series (I have them all planned out so I know what each one is about, essentially) and I’m happy about how it was written and how it turned out. But above all, I hope you all enjoy it :) you all have been amazing. 
> 
> Warnings:  
> -Implied/Referenced Eating Disorder  
> -Brief Self-Harm  
> -Non-Consensual Drugging  
> -Mention of Needles  
> -Mental Illness (PTSD, Depression)  
> -Referenced Child Abuse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Guilt is a funny thing. For a man like Spencer Reid, it’s a flesh-eating, heart-wrenching, murderous phenomenon. Deep down, he knows he shouldn’t feel bad for shooting Tobias Hankle. 
> 
> Mostly because he was the one helping Spencer shoot up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big rant at the end notes because Revelations had me feeling some kind of way, haha! I hope you enjoy this multi-chapter installment, I actually really adore the three chapters I wrote for this so I hope you all do to. Enjoy!
> 
> Warnings:  
> -Implied Torture  
> -Non Consensual Drugging  
> -Implied Depression/Anxiety/Mental Illness  
> -Drug Addiction  
> -Referenced Child Abuse

**Part One of: The Labyrinth of Stars**

_“Over every person's life, I have found, Satan masturbates, and out from the dispersion of this black cloud, at some point follows a demon who waits to wound."_ _-The Raveness (Adrift in Acheron)_

It isn't raining, and with a heavy heart, Spencer thinks that maybe it should be. The water isn't whispering, it isn't singing as it rebounds off any building that dared stand in it's way. The sky likes to sit back and observe every once in awhile, give the floor a break from the abuse and drowning. When the stars begin to talk, it's never quiet. It's echoing and eardrum-rupturing; yet instead of scaring away the minuscule creatures frantically scurrying under cover, like the rain, the stars bring those insignificant things out.

They watch from the high perch of the nighttime sky, eyes bright whites and yellows. 

_"Choose one to die."_

A turn of events that not even the stars, the ones that hold all fate and future, could have predicted. Usually, it's the sky that gets a bird's eyes view of the particular doctor they hold so dearly. Now, however, they aren't alone as six perturbed agents that are family in everything but blood watch through the gritty live footage displayed on the many computers the tech-genius has set up.

The grave outside, marked in advance for the one and only Spencer Reid, is gradually deepening as time ticks by sorely.

There may not be a spade shoveling away at the course innards of the earth, but the hole is being dug, rest assured as hours pass and the team is no closer to finding their beloved doctor. His heart, which had been beating erratically against his ribs for the better part of the night, had plummeted to a fathomless depth as his bindings pierced skin and the bottom of his foot stung.

Spencer was counting the minutes that went by when he wasn't in his family's arms.

One day, years ago when he hadn't been so arid and impersonal, the young genius believed it were possible that once one passes away, they are placed among the stars. Their purpose: to look down upon the others, though not unkindly, and to send their warmest regards though they cannot be tangible. Perhaps, to watch over the ones they left behind. And the young boy of seven, who thought that might be true, knew quite indisputably, that living amongst the stars had to be one of the loneliest existences in the entire universe. One amongst a billion- no, a trillion. Wasting away, until finally, they burn out.

He realizes, quickly, that a future such as that was implausible.

No matter how badly he wished to live the rest of eternity as a mindless, body-less star... he could not. And once he realized that, the thought of dying became much more frightening.

However; now, as he sits idly, waiting for his team to find him as his mind begins to shut down, the thought of dying didn't seem so bad. As dilaudid races through his veins, numbing him and sending him back to his childhood, he wishes dumbly that he could sit with the stars and not have to worry about whether or not he will live to see the next day. Or in this case, the next hour, or minute, even.

The grave gets a little deeper as the door opens to reveal Tobias Hankel, not he glorious face of Hotch, or Morgan... or god-forbid, Gideon.

_"It's God's will."_

That's what it all comes down to, Reid recognizes as Tobias plays another round of Russian Roulette, the target being his aching head. A sinner, Spencer tells himself and another spoonful of dirt is thrown behind an invisible shoulder, that's all I'll ever be.

_"You're a liar."_

Am I? Spencer questions himself and that gains a light flicker form the stars. At this rate, he'll be joining them any minute.

_"I'm not a devil. I'm not a devil."_

Tobias doesn't listen, of course, because his father has grasp ahold of his mind. Spencer thinks back to the night of rain, the buckets on his front porch, the dying flowers, the hole in the fence, the Discovery Channel, the neon clock, Diana's haunting wails, his father laying his head against the wall. And finally, of bones crushing beneath ruthless hands. Then, he thinks of Tobias; the burning fish hearts and livers, the way his hands shook when he was in his right mind, his apologies, the self-medication.

You don't deserve to complain, the doctor reminds himself. Hotch had it worse, Spencer, you absolute idiot. Tobias had it worse. It was one day, ten minutes of pain is nothing compared to a childhood of abuse. Quit your pity party and think of a way out of here!

Somewhere in Las Vegas, a mother is thinking of her petunias, so bright and full of life. The pretty colors and the soft petals gleaming in the summer sun.

Only for them to have died years ago.

_"Confess!"_

So he does. He does, and the last spade-full of dirt is thrown from the hole, awaiting it's company patiently. Spencer tried- he tried to desperately to be strong and to out-smart his way home by mis-quoting the Bible in a futile attempt to send a clue to the other's, who are merely stars in a clear night sky. His nearly lifeless body is dragged from the cabin, the putrid scent of fish leaving his burnt nostrils as he limps to catch up to Tobias- no, Charles. It may be all in vain, as the dirt squelches between his fingers, staining his knees and digging beneath his fingernails.

The ground may be solid, but Spencer is already six feet under.

When he kills Tobias, watches the blood rush from the open wound on his chest as he falls to the floor with a bitter question that will haunt Reid for the rest of his pathetic life, he feels guilt. Grief, even.

So, he glances at the sky.

Big, brown eyes look towards the stars and shine with unshed tears as it looks unchanged. No dot is brighter than the other. The boy wants to scream, but suddenly, flashlights are on him and Hotch is asking if he's okay. No, he wants to say, but the words that leave his mouth instead are humiliating and the crack in his voice makes him wish he were at the end of Tobias' bullet instead. Aaron grips him loosely, surprised by the embrace, and let's the genius saunter off. JJ hugs him, but her skin is fiery red against his own and he wishes she would let go. Burning hatred runs through his veins and he aches to have the blissful numbness back, anger seeps through his pores, though he conceals it almost effortlessly.

Spencer wants to hug Morgan.

Oh, what he would give to have his best friend's arms swaddled around his emaciated and broken body. But he doesn't allow it. Morgan gives him this sad look, and with that Spencer stops walking and asks for a minute alone with the corpse of his captor.

Like weed-killer again a perfectly patented flower, he wilts into a dark sludge and pries the dilaudid from the cold, dead body with no remorse.

Somewhere in Las Vegas, a mother is wondering why her son doesn't visit more often.

The stars weep that night, from high atop the hospital's roof. The sky isn't overcast, in fact, there isn't a cloud in sight, but somehow, they cry torturously at the frail form on the cot. Illuminated eyes watch diligently and with great interest as pale, bruised arms push haphazardly at the nurses trying to poke him with an IV. His sobs fall upon deaf ears as they hold him down and shove the needle into his already scared inner-elbow, as if it were second nature. Weathering into an already battered fence.

And as the celestial bodies talk themselves, they come to the conclusion that rain would not be needed that night.

He looks so raw, sitting there, purple and blue against pristine white. Like there is no skin over his pain and the moist dirt makes him bleed as if he had no skin at all. The boy sits in unadulterated hurt, stem wilting, petals falling and roots shrinking as he is thrown into the empty grave and buried alive. He may not be in that cemetery anymore, but Tobias watches him from the corner with a spade in hand, mocking him. I may be dead, ghost Tobias whispers into Reid's blood ears, but you're already six feet below me.

Water seeps through the man's skin, drowning him in the soft pitter-patters of rain from the inside. He looks out the window of his room, to the clear night sky, and twists the urge to jump out into it.

"Reid," Gideon's voice is gentle from beside him. The nurses have left the room after being seen holding down and drugging the team's traumatized little brother. Morgan was sure to give them a piece of his mind, and Hotch wasn't about to put his lawyering skills to waste as he threatens them. "Look at me, Reid, please."

Gideon never sounds desperate, and it irks the younger man to no end.

I had to plea for my life, the boy screams in his mind, why don't you have the decency to do the same?

"I want to go home."

"I know, son, but we can't leave until you're cleared. You know that."

Spencer does, but it goes without saying, a broken fence doesn't quite work like it used to. The boy smiles to himself- a fist to his face, a shoe to his gut. The but of a gun towards the back of his head A branch against the bottom of his foot. The itch in his elbow.

"It's strange..."

"What is, Spencer?"

The others are waiting at the door, as if the threshold separated them from some unworldly universe. A sense of control fills the boy as he imagines the power he holds to keep them away, to keep them back from coddling him. It feels nice. It's almost as if he hadn't been drugged against his will mere hours earlier. But, the control made him feel prideful, and though the dirt isn't gone and the fence isn't fixed, he merely waters the grave and looks away from the hole.

"How hollow I feel," His mind is telling them that they don't care, that he should shut up and keep it concealed. But it's true. He feels numb, and not the heavenly nothingness that came along with the drugs he had hidden so carefully for safekeeping. "Can we go home now?"

"No," Jason whispers. "You need to get checked by the doctors, but for them to do so, they need to sedate you. You need surgery, son. Your heart can't handle the pressure."

That's funny, the stars think. His heart has had to withhold so much worse, and yet it was failing under the stress of two days worth of pain. It hurt worse when he watched his mother being taken away at eighteen. But it hadn't stopped then, though he wished it had so he didn't have to live through the guilt.

"I don't," That earns a round of chuckles from the stars. "There's no internal damage. I will be fine, now, I want to go home."

Spencer's heart, that had stayed in it's cavern for most of the night, began to leap from it's hiding spot as the other's slowly creeped in. The control was leaving him. His world was shattering. It was the night that it rained all over again. He wasn't a child anymore. He needed to have control.

"Listen to me, Spencer. You are injured and you need surgery, and we will not leave this hospital until you receive it. They need to sedate you and-"

"No!" A collective gasp among the night sky. The Spencer Reid they've watched for years never yelled. That was all part of the fun of watching him; his naivety, his innocence, his timidness. "You can't- you can't do this to me. I'm not a sinner! I'm not a sinner! Not a devil, I'm not a devil. What did I do wrong?"

"We're all sinners, son. You did nothing wrong and you certainly are not a devil."

Morgan. Morgan is at his bedside, bushy eyebrows furrowed in solicitude. He doesn't sit to close to the boy's face, wishing to allow him that space (control... Spencer thinks he had control when he glares at Morgan and the man sits further away from him). Derek sets his large hand on Spencer's ankle, hoping the familiar touch will help.

Oh, how the stars bellow.

"No! Get the hell off me! Stop, I'm not a sinner! Not a sinner!"

Morgan removes his hand as if he had just touched scolding water and backs away, eyes wide and blood-shot from withholding tears. He cannot cry, not when Spencer is lying here, scared and confused and unaware of his own tears cascading down his ashen and ghostly complexion.

Spencer covers his ears and rocks, the input obviously overwhelming to his sensitive ears and eyes as he squeezes them shut. Drawing his knees to his chest, he shutters back and forth.

When the nurses come back and administer the anesthesia, he mumbles out Tobias' name and says he doesn't want it. But as always, he is bullied into submitting. 

Two weeks pass, Spencer goes in for his psychological exam and passes with flying colors.

The art of deception is depicted in many ways. One way, just happened to be the twenty-two books written upon the subject that Reid had studied prior to the session. Another way, was putting on a smile when on the inside, he was wilting. His favorite, was getting high in a precinct bathroom and walking out as if nothing happened, and suddenly releasing him of his bad mood from withdrawals.

Reid finds control, like deception, in many different forms.

When he starves himself, it makes him feel as though he has the willpower to withhold anything and everything. For, if he can stand the raging hunger pains, the fainting, the never-ending chill and the way his hair falls out in chunks, he can hold back the urge to stick a needle through his pliable skin. The total emptiness of his stomach combined with the way his black coffee settles like a rock in his gut, fills him with an uneasy sense of glee. And when he steps on the scale to see his weight has gotten to dangerously low numbers, he knows he can beat anything. Even Charles Hankel and the guilt of killing his son.

When Spencer punches himself, usually quite gingerly on the thigh, it feels euphoric. Not as good as the drugs, but teetering closer as the days pass. The real relief comes at the end of the day, when he undressed and sees the welts and bruises he leaves behind. It's like Tobias never touched him. It's like William never got the chance to lay a hand on him. It as if... the rain had stopped a long time ago.

Lastly, when he sets a Bible on fire in his kitchen, he finally knows what it feels like when an unsub kills. The comfort in watching the passionate embers eat away at the tan, rotting pages was like watching a work of art being made right before his unassuming eyes. Blank and uncaring, he watched as the book disintegrated on his stove, ignoring his fire alarm and unable to look away as his doe-eyes embraced the warmth of the fire. He closes them, lets the heat encompass him, and ignores how similar the stars are to the dying fire before him. Though he can never truly forget, he pushes it to the back of his mind: the fact that every page was scribbled with the word 'SINNER' in black ink.

His heart feels a little lighter and he can breathe easier, but it was like putting a picture frame over a hole in the wall.

It was never truly fixed, merely hidden.

What hurts the most, in the end, is how no one did anything.

Spencer knew that they saw him withering away with each passing day. He had looked at himself in the mirror and knew how utterly horrible he looked. At the thought of gaining the attention, though he would tell himself he didn't want it, it gave him hope that they would help him. That they even could help him. Weeks pass and it isn't getting better, the problem isn't fixing itself and no one was there to mend the wound. As he grew more dependent on the phial and needle, it became apparent that he had been right all along.

No one cared.

No one ever had, and no one ever would.

He could love a junkie? A druggie? A man who punched his thigh raw everyday just to prove to himself that his own pain would never come from someone else. Was his pride that big? Was he that egotistical?

The genius misses a plane, and Gideon sits him down in a bar and gives him a piece of advice that will resonate with him forever, for being the single worst piece of advice he'd ever been told.

It's a Sunday, a day Spencer had grown to hate when he thinks of church bells and God judging him.

Morgan knocks on his door late at night, when the stars have come out to play. Spencer looks at them, had been for hours now, and glared halfheartedly when he gleam at him with bigotry and prejudice. They're almost as bad as the rain, though the only difference between them and the sky's tears, are the fact that Spencer can touch the droplets. The stars are too far away.

His grave has turned into a pile.

"Hey, pretty boy," Morgan grins when the door opens to reveal a disheveled and decrepit doctor, dressed in a stained sweater than hung from his lithe form and sweatpants. Mis-matched socks, as always, and that's the only thing keeping his grave from becoming a mountain. "Thought I'd bring over some Thai and we could have a guy's night. Oh! And guess what I got!"

The sing-songy voice nearly puts Reid out of his misery.

Somewhere in Las Vegas, a mother is cradling a baby doll, shushing a nurse as she exclaims that her son, Spencer, is sleeping and that she has a class tomorrow that she needs to rest up for.

"What?" Spencer mutters.

"Okay, so I know you like documentaries and whatnot, so I thought I'd bring one over."

"But you don't like documentaries. You didn't have to do that for me," They settle on the couch and Derek puts the takeout containers on the coffee table. The smell invaded Spencer's nostrils and he supposed it's better than fish organs.

"You're right, I hate documentaries. But I got a pretty cool one that I think we'll both enjoy. Something about, uh, reptiles or whatever. I don't even know. I borrowed it from the library- which I had to get a card for- so you better like it, man."

Spencer just nods. He knows trying to kick the man out will be futile.

Morgan puts the DVD into the player and the younger man finds himself drowning out the noise as the post-high haze comes over him like a wave. It's hard to remember a time when he had been sober. He rather have a hit, just to ease his headache and take the edge off. Documentaries and Thai can't take away his pain the same way the dilaudid does.

When a familiar British voice takes him roughly by the ears, bile rises in the young genius' throat. And, oh, how Tobias laughs with the stars.

" _Watch, as our brave host travels back in time to relive the Jurassic and walk with dinosaurs as if they were real. Overcoming dino-sized obstacles and holding his own against the Earth's largest reptiles, he learns all about these magnificent beasts from up-close. This is... Dinosaur Plant."_

His heart abates into William's awaiting palms.

So, no. It didn't rain any of those days, but with the amount of tears spilled from Spencer in those months, it might as well have been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I get how someone may argue that the team didn’t do anything about Reid’s drug addiction because if they did, it would have to go on record and he would have lost his job... but still. His health and happiness are more important (even if his life kinda did revolve around his job). They all turned a blind eye and didn’t even help him on the down-low, y’know? AND GIDEON AND MORGAN!! They gave him terrible advice! And Morgan totally disregarded him on the jet after the following episode about the girls and the leaves. Anyways... I’m angry they didn’t help him, but I decided not to fix it for now because I like seeing Spencer suffer... I hope you all enjoyed!
> 
> Feel free to comment, leave kudos and save for later! Lots of love- Lara <3


	2. The Core of Innocence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world is connected, Spencer realizes as he gazed across the small backyard. He analyzes the team’s laughter, their smiling faces and boisterous conversations. He is silent, in the background as always, and he likes it that way. The world is connected.
> 
> They are the stars and he is the upside down Blister Beetle who can’t flip itself over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *ATTENTION* This is canon divergent! Henry is three in this, but Tobias recently happened and Spencer is struggling through a relapse of dilaudid. The team consists of Reid, JJ, Hotch, Emily, Morgan and Rossi. And Will and JJ are married! So the timeline doesn’t exactly add up to the show. Read on!
> 
> Warnings:  
> -Referenced Drug Addiction/Abuse  
> -Implied Depression/Mental Illness  
> -Suicidal Thoughts  
> -Implied Child Abuse

**Part Two of: The Labyrinth of Stars**

_”Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I am one of them.” -Ray Bradbury_

The stars dance across a different night sky this warm, Friday summer night. Waltzing to a silent tune and singing wordless melodies, shining brightly in a sea of cool blue eyes. Like fish swimming through a crystal clear pond, they reflect nothing but pure, unadulterated elation and innocence. A gleam that all children had, should have.

Reid wonders if he ever had that captivating stare, or if he had dark eyes all his life.

_"You have sad eyes," Diana whispers into her child's hair as she brushes back the brown locks with frail fingers. Small, chocolate eyes look up at her with adoration. His small eyebrows curl in confusion as he leans into his mother's hand, which now lay gently on his pale cheek. "Sad, like an old sailor. Oh, my darling. What beautiful eyes you have, just like your father's. Warm, sad eyes."_

_"What does that mean, Momma?"_ _Spencer's small voice questions quietly. For a child of three years old, his vocabulary is already exceptional and his mind is in constant motion._

_For Diana, a woman who can look into her baby's eyes and see herself, talking to her son is like watching the rain pour. A horrible way to waste existence._

_She smiles kindly, takes her son in her arms and drags his small body into her lap. Diana holds him close to her chest, relishing in the warmth his tiny self_ _admits when he leans into her breasts, face cuddling close into the cold skin of her neck. Humming quietly, she rocks them, wishing they could stay that way for eternity. Just the two of them._

_"Nothing, darling. My son. My Spencer."_

_Young Spencer doesn't squander his special time with his mother wondering what her cryptic words meant. So he closes his wide, curious, and_ _according to his mother, sad eyes and lets himself fall asleep peacefully against her body._

_The two of us, Diana assures herself. Nothing but the two of us._

Henry LaMontagne-Jareau does not have sad eyes.

Maybe that is why the stars, the small ones that never make it to the night sky, take refuge in his large, buggy eyes. It's safe in there, warm and surrounded by love, colors and most importantly, innocence. The one place a star would want to be, if they had a choice. Most do not, but that was besides the matter, because when Spencer looked into his godson's eyes and saw how the stars played within those blue orbs, he found happiness.

In more ways than Reid could count, Henry was his god-given solace.

A reason to wake up in the morning, really, because deep down Spencer knew his friends could live without him. His mother had forgotten him more times than he care to admit. William, who was as far away from his son as the stars were, probably didn't even know if Spencer was still alive at this point ( and if he were honest with himself, he couldn't seem to bring himself to care). Yes, if he died, the world would continue rotating for all but one person in his pitiful life.

Henry adored him. Adored him like Spencer loved his mother, looked at her with nothing but love and thankfulness for simply existing. It scared him, if he was honest.

Spencer's favorite days were the ones where the team, the family, would spend most of the night with each other, eating outside and enjoying the weather as if they hadn't just seen the worst of mankind. And while the others may not cherish these times as much as Spencer, he didn't mind. It offered an escape from his mind, from the memories of every corpse he'd ever seen that simply refused to go away. From every journal he's read depicting the killers thoughts and how similarly he felt when he took dilaudid as when they killed. From his feeble mind cracking under the pressure of day to day life,

He sits in JJ's backyard now, in the soft grass as the wind whirls around him, messing with his hair and nuzzling the exposed skin on his neck.

The others watch, eyes light and content, as the young genius and his godson sit together in the garden and watch a beetle move along the blades of grass. Spencer doesn't mind their prying eyes. It's better than being stalked by the stars, that gleam so horrendously that they are impossible to ignore as they bore heinously into his thin skin.

The young man watches Henry closely, eyes fond. But his happiness comes at a cost.

Don't get to close, he reminds himself as he twiddles his thumbs in his lap, legs crossed. Don't get to close, because at any moment he could be ripped away from you, and then what? What will you live for? Why will you get out of bed? Keep your distance, so it will hurt less. You learned not to make the same mistake twice after what happened with your mother.

"Look, Uncle Spe'cer!" Henry's cheerful voice pulls Spencer from his dismal thoughts."Look, look, look!"

"Wow, Henry," Spencer leans down to get a closer look at the wiggling beetle in the dirt. He admires the small thing with a smile. "That is what is known as a Blister Beetle. It's part of the family Meloidae and gets its name from the blistering agent the insect uses as a defense mechanism: cantharidin. Some are even aposematically colored, like this one, meaning it's colors show it's toxicity."

Henry gave him a funny look, pursing his lips before grinning and giggling. "You're silly, Uncle Spe'cer."

"Uncle Spencer, Henry," Reid smiles cheekily and ruffled the boy's long, blonde hair. It was quiet for a moment, aside from the toddler's humming as he watched the beetle trudge along. The setting of the sun behind the horizon caught the older man's attention as he gazed off, passed the trees and towards the large star that was fading. Something about the sun made him smile. Whether it be from the bright, yellow color or the heat it gave off, he wasn't quite sure. Maybe it was his disdain for stars that made him so affectionate towards the sun. It was its own embodiment, different from all the other stars that littered the night sky so haphazardly. "Hey, where did Jack go?"

Henry frowned sheepishly. "He stepped on an anthill. His daddy is putting ont-oint- ont-"

"Ointment."

"Yeah, that! Uncle Aaron is putting that on his feet so he can't play. I think he went inside."

Spencer hummed in acknowledgment and nodded.

He took a moment to look down into the two small oceans of stars in Henry's eyes. The twisting, whirling maelstrom of unsullied chastity that gawked in guileless bewilderment.So enthralling and festive, unassuming to the true dread and disgust of the world. Henry, he tells himself once more, does not have sad eyes, and maybe that's why he loves his godson so much. He's so unlike Reid in every way, shape and form, it's a miracle they even get along.

Birds that are different in color, size and chirp can still fly together, the doctor supposes.

A string of golden locks falls over the young boy's eyes, prompting Spencer to tuck it behind his ear. The boy gazed up at him and shyly smiles in thanks before observing the beetle again.

"You know, Henry," Spencer clears his throat and shuffles against the grass. He thinks this is a good time to bring up what he had been dreading. “I have a big box at home, full of things I want to give you one day."

The boy's eyes light up like a Christmas tree.

Spencer wonders if that's an accurate description, seeing as though he had never felt the joy of seeing a Christmas tree in his own home, decorated and huddling around an abundance of colorfully wrapped presents. He had seen them, often, in the windows at stores along the block, during the holiday season, but he never had his own. It never bothered him, until now, as he wonders if the way the stars light up the sky are similar to the pointed lights that embraced the branches of the evergreens. Would they look as horrid as they did in the night? Would they berate and judge and stare with the upmost cruelty? Would they wail in sadness and laugh at other's misfortune?

"Really?! What kinda stuff?"

"Books," The small smile falls and for a the briefest of moments, Spencer's heart stops. "And letters. And some of my favorite pens. You'll understand when you're older, but I just wanted to let you know that if I were to ever... leave... that you must go into my home and take the box. Everything in there is yours, okay?"

Those small, rosy lips begin to tremble in poorly concealed agony. His eyes fill with tears that threatened to fall a the slightest of movements, glassy orbs doing nothing to hide the sudden hopelessness and poignancy that filled them at the young genius' words. Spencer realizes his mistake, what he had implied, and feels his heart swell with what felt like rubbing alcohol, burning his organs and melting through his skin.

"You're leaving?"

"No! No, Henry, I'm not leaving, I promise. I swear to you, I'd never leave you. I was just letting you know, okay? I'm sorry for scaring you, Henry. I truly am."

But Henry just whines and ignored him.

Like the stars do, when Spencer screams at them in the middle of the night to stop watching him. When he's in the middle of a post-high manic break and he doesn't think about that fact that the stars can't possibly answer back. They can't stop staring because they don't have eyes to pry. And they can't just disappear because they are bound to their home in the dark expanse of oblivion for all eternity, or until they grow so large that they burn out. They burn out, like how Spencer's body is moving slower than usual because he has no energy from days of not eating combined with the exhaustion that follows hitting up. Or how the bags under his eyes are so dark and prominent, one might mistake him for a walking corpse, haunting the living.

Henry stands on his chubby, wobbling legs and doesn't mind the tears now free flowing down his flushed cheeks. Spencer watches with concerned eyes, utterly disgusted with himself that he made his godson cry.

His life is shattering, and to think, only moments earlier, the most painful thing to think about was how the sun was setting.

Not how his godson might hate him, now.

Henry runs away, across the field of grass and up his back patio stairs, which he stumbles on. JJ, eyes wide and eyebrows pointed down at the edges, kneels down and effortlessly pulls him into a hug. She sneaks a glance towards Reid, who now is staring down at the beetle as it flips itself over, struggling on it's back. Legs flailing uselessly.

Oh, how he wishes to crush it.

To put it out of it's misery.

To end it's miserable, pathetic, insolent, worthless, inutile-

"Spence!" JJ's bright voice stops him from his homicidal thoughts as he steers away from the bug and back towards the group on the patio. Will is standing, quite stiff as a rod, by the barbecue, but he relaxes some as Garcia chats his ears off. In fact, he even smiles, as she flashes jazz hands and her clunky jewelry crinkles. Morgan, Prentiss and Hotch are nursing beers, and Spencer resists the urge to profile Emily as she stands there, as if she were just one of the men. Jack is sitting on a lounge chair, kicking his stained feet back and forth as the ointment dries.His crocodile tears are all washed up.

Spencer wonders if he cried like that as a child, or it he had been born with thick skin.

The genius stands on shaky legs as he feels his knees threaten to give out beneath him. His breathing is shallow, ragged, and he can feel the effects of a panic attack crawling towards him like a lion stalking it's prey. Not right now, he pleads, at least wait until I get home.

He wants to get inside before the stars come out.

Approaching the patio, he is met with smiling faces and a vague greeting from Morgan. Risking a glance towards Henry, he is met with shining tears cascading down his cheeks and a weak glare that held no really malice.

It's quiet, no one dares to speak.

And Spencer knows that in more ways that one, that his team is more alike to the stars than to the rain.

He isn't sure if that irks him, or if it makes him want to rip his hair out, or if it makes him feel more like his mother than ever before. The eyes constantly watching him, only to dart away when he seeks them out. The shy twinkle of light that sneaks its way through the clouded atmosphere. How similarly their gazes can break through the massive wall he placed in front of his emotions to keep them away. Spencer knew, logically, that the situation was realistic. His teammates weren't ignoring him, they weren't purposefully putting the fact that they can see his relapse into addiction aside, and they weren't hurting him out of spite. Each one had their own problems to deal with, their own lives. They didn't have the time nor energy to think about him every hour of every day. They couldn't help him if he didn't want help, because the strain would be too much on them. And like how an owner will put their pet down when they're in pain, they wouldn't put the time in to try and fix the unfixable.

It doesn't bother him- he swears it doesn't.

_"Life isn't fair, my darling boy. The sooner you learn that, the sooner you can prepare yourself for the harsh, dismal reality that is living. That's why we read the authors we do, to prepare ourselves- to learn. You can enjoy yourself, but don't let it be at the fall of your mind, my Spencer."_

_The young boy of seven settled heavily to his duvet, pajamas feeling itchy and tight against his skin, though they were a size to big. His eyes darkened at his mother's words, though he clung to every syllable_ _like a life line._

_"Will it always be that way?" Spencer questions softly, thinking back to his peers at school, who ridiculed him so horribly, he sought comfort from his ill mother._

_Diana looks down before gently petting her son's hair down._

_"With people who believe that one life is worth more than another... yes, darling boy."_

_Spencer's lip quirks at the corner before he frowns in thought. "What about the insects? Are their lives equal to a human's?"_

_Diana blinks harshly. "Yes, of course. Every life matters! No matter how small or insignificant they may seem. Your life is just as equal as Miss... Martha's baby girl. Even though she is smaller, younge_ r _and different from you and I."_

_"Ms. Demtra, mother. Ms. Martha has a baby boy, remember?"_

_"Oh, yes. Now I do. Get some sleep, baby, for tomorrow is another day."_

_"Goodnight, mother. I love you."_

_The world is so, utterly cruel and heartless._

_"I love you too, my baby boy."_

Spencer thinks back to the beetle, small and insignificant, crawling among the blades of grass without a care in the world. A scenario comes to mind, that if he were to choose between a human life, and an insect's life, if both had guns aimed to kill them, he'd choose the human. That would be the obvious choice.

But why? He questions internally. Why is the human's life more precious than the insect's? He hates it. He hates not knowing why.

But, no... if he were to choose between killing the beetle or killing himself, he would choose himself. 

"No matter how small..." Diana's words echo through his head.

"Henry," JJ's voice pulls him from his crisis (which he will continue to have when he gets home). "What are you talking about?"

Spencer watches the young boy sitting on his mother's lap, teary eyes glaring at his godfather. Don't say it, he chastises, don't you dare. He hadn't been following the conversation thus far- to caught up in trivial things such as stars, beetles and death- but he had a pretty go idea about what Henry had said to his mother, if the dried tears were anything to go by. The man only wished the ground would open up and swallow him whole, drowning him in a dreary, dark abyss.

"Uncle Spe'cer," Uncle Spencer, the genius corrects in his head, and wonders if adults were angry at his intelligence as a child as he was irritated at children's inability to speak correctly. "H-He s-sa-said he was l-l-leaving. I don' want Uncle Spe'cer to leave!"

The patio blanches into uncomfortable silence as they mull over the words.

Jack's bottom lip begins to wobble as he stares up at Spencer, who's eyes are downcast and emotionless. The boy whimpered and looked towards his father, asking quietly is that were true as tears filled his wide eyes. Hotch doesn't answer.

"Leaving?" JJ recites in a hush. She looks towards her best friend of nearly four years. "You never said anything about leaving. Leaving where?"

Spencer shakes his head and runs a hand through his ruffed-up hair. His elbow burns, itches with an uncontrollable desire, whispering to him that relief was an arms-length away. So close, he could taste it. Was it worth leaving early just so he could taste the sweet release? The artificial dopamine that rushed through his veins? In a state where time doesn't have to feel linear? The state in which immense, unmeasurable pleasure courses through him, easing his pain and giving him a false sense of security and confidence?

That was the golden question.

The question that the stars ask in the dark hours of night, when they felt like humiliating him. Mocking him and defeating him, as stars do. Watching him with bated breath as he sat in his bathroom, hands shaking feverishly, clenching around the small phial of liquid euphoria to see if he would give in or not. It didn't matter if he had promised himself he wouldn't. They enjoyed watching him break.

Was it worth it? Any of it?

"I'm not leaving, JJ, don't worry. It was just a little misunderstanding, wasn't it Henry? I'm sorry to scare you."

Henry shakes his head as his lips quiver but otherwise stays silent. The conversation is bruised off as Will announces that dinner is ready.

Later that night, when he gets home and beelines to his bathroom, he feel erratic as he searches through his medicine cabinet, fingers twitching for the drug. The celestial bodies from above watch as if he were his own reality television show.

As his hands wrap weakly around a small phial of liquid, he is interrupted by his phone ringing bleakly.

It’s JJ, and he felt dirty if he didn’t answer it.

“Reid.”

“Hey, Spence. Sorry to bother you so late, but I, uh... wanted to talk to you about earlier.”

The agent-turned-criminal shuts his eyes and settles into his bedroom, seeping into his mattress as if it would consume him. He secretly hoped it would.

Inside, he begs for the old Spencer. The Spencer that could speak to his friends without thinking they all had it out for him. The Spencer that didn’t spend every waking moment caring more about a glass jar more than his own friends and family. The Spencer that felt joy at ranting off statistics and talking about a recent book he had read.

The Spencer that was capable of loving himself.

“It didn’t mean anything, JJ. Henry just took what I said the wrong way and I did a bad job about easing his worries. I’m sorry for all the trouble I caused tonight. Really ruined the mood, huh?”

JJ huffed lightly. “No, no! Not at all, Spence. I just wanted to know what you told Henry that made him act the way he did. Heck, he wouldn’t fall asleep until he knew for a fact that his Uncle Spencer wasn’t leaving him! This phone call is proof, by the way.”

Spencer let a small laugh expel through his sigh, but it was a hollow, dead sound.

“It doesn’t really matter. Now if you’d-“

“Please, Spencer,” His first name, ‘R’ and all, scares him. “Tell me. I care about you, you know, and when you say stuff like that it scares me. I can’t lose you. Not again.”

“I never left.”

One of the many lies Spencer Reid has spread throughout the passed few months. One that will explode like a fire cracker in his face.

JJ sounds like she is crying, and with that thought in mind, Spencer considers winging it tonight. Not bothering with measuring and weighing and checking the grams. She couldn’t care too much, right? Not if he made her cry the way he had.

“You have, Spencer. Maybe not physically, but you aren’t the same anymore. Ever since Hankle, you’ve been so distant and you always look so tired and angry. So sad, all the time. You never talk to me anymore, and it’s like everything we do just bores you. What happened? I miss you- so damn much.”

He doesn’t know what happened. He doesn’t know where the old Spencer is or if he’s ever coming back. The new Spencer is a Blister Beetle stuck on it’s back and the old Spencer is a butterfly with broken wings.

The real question is, Spencer thinks to himself, are they worth the same?

“I’m fine, JJ. We all struggle at some point in our lives, I’m not special.”

No one really is, in the end.

“Promise me you’re okay? That you won’t do something stupid? You know, Spence, everything will be alright.”

A sudden shadow casts itself over Spencer’s eyes and his body brings to shake with ungodly tremors. That phrase, one he had heard all throughout his life, still haunts him to this day. Although, there are many variations of it: everything will be alright, everything will be okay, stick with it, there’s always tomorrow. He is done listening to lies.

“Why, if it’s going to be alright, do we see it getting worse everyday? Jeanna DuPeau.”

“Spe-“

He hangs up, leans back into his duvet and pulls a pillow over his face. He screams, long and hard and raw into the fabric until his breathing hitches and it comes out at a higher octave. That doesn’t stop him, however, as he breathes in what he can and screams once more into the darkness. Over and over again until he can no longer breath and his head is swimming from lack of oxygen.

His father’s hands are on him. Hurting him, and he finds himself laughing into the apparition. Into the haunting memory of that fateful night that started it all.

Lidia Longorio once said, It takes a lot to shatter a person whose soul whispers, “I’ve been through worse.” Spencer isn’t sure if he still has a soul, or if that has disappeared too.

The stars hide, ashamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This installment really hurt my heart. I love Henry and Spencer together so much! They’re absolutely adorable. Even in the show, you can see how happy Spencer is when he’s around Henry it makes me feel giddy, haha. I hope you all enjoyed, and remember this is canon divergent so the timeline is different. :)
> 
> Feel free to comment, leave kudos and save for later! Lots of love- Lara <3


	3. Gluttons and Hollowed Trees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The emptiness is nice. It’s a far cry from the piercing stairs of the stars or the haunting laughter form the rain as it falls feverishly. It shows how much control he has, truly. It shows how strong he is. He can beat this... he has to, even if it kills him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one really resonates me, so please be nice. It kinda hurt to write, but I like it a lot. Please enjoy! :)
> 
> Warnings:  
> -Eating Disorder Tendencies/Thoughts  
> -Bingeing/Purging  
> -Self Harm

**Part Three of: The Labyrinth of Stars**

_"So there you have it- my sorry tale. That's how something I thought I controlled ended up controlling me." -Sara Darer Littman_

Bagels are the devil's spawn. They are thick, to the point of being more like black tar than actual food, if that were even possible. Stuffed with gluten and fatty carbs that make one's belly pop for the remainder of the day. Bagels are food that add on a pound moments after devouring, and they make one feel so full, they should be afraid of bursting at the seams. 

Spencer watches from his seat in the lowly, warm cafe as the man across from him absolutely destroys a blueberry bagel with extra cream cheese.

And to think, he even bought a cinnamon-strudel muffin for later.

It's been approximately three days, seven hours, forty-six minutes and nine seconds since Spencer had consumed anything apart from black coffee, winter-mint gum, and a singular rice cake. And though his stomach burned as the acid ripped him apart from the inside out, he held strong and didn't give in to the urges to gorge himself on every edible item in his kitchen (which, at the moment, only consisted of coffee grounds, an empty tin of ginger snaps and a half-eaten pint of ice cream).

Control. That's all it came down to in the end.

He could choose to eat a blueberry bagel and extra cream cheese with Derek Morgan. And he could choose to buy a cinnamon strudel muffin for later on in the day. It would be his choice to add cream and sugar into his morning coffee. At the thought of cream, his vacant eyes gravitate towards the sugar and mix-in station by the exit. A bottle of half and half glares right on back.

35 calories for two tablespoons, he remembers.

Adverting his eyes, he nestled back into the worn leather couch with a vexed sigh.

It was a Tuesday morning and the team had been working on the same case over the course of the week. However, their subject and later dubbed unsub was currently in custody and time was on their side. It wasn't often that they had local cases, but Spencer was thankful that he was able to have his morning routine stay somewhat the same, as if there were no case at all. That included breakfast or coffee with Morgan, if the other man decided to join. Sometimes he wouldn't, but Spencer ignored this fact and they never talked about it. He also never apologized for his absence.

It was a grim day in Virginia. Dark clouds lazily rolled over the overcast sky, and if Spencer didn't hate the rain as much as he did, he may have found that the storm added to the ambiance of the small cafe. It reminded him very much of his apartment. Something out of a century old manor; dark wood, endless bookcases, and antiques.

"I still can't believe it was Harrison the whole time! I mean, common, he was such a nice guy. I guess that goes to show that maybe we aren't as good as profiling as we thought," Morgan smirked, polishing of half of his smothered bagel.

Spencer hugged his warm mug closer to himself, the warm porcelain feeling comforting against his cold fingers.

"We can't blame ourselves. He is a typical sociopath, and not even his partner saw it coming. Law enforcement has a staggering amount of criminals working within the seems of the system. It's no surprise, really, that a detective turned out to be our unsub in the end."

 _520 calories for the bagel_ , a voice whispers into Spencer's ear. _Ninety-Seven calories for every ounce cream cheese, but look how much is on there. It has to be at least 300. Look how good Morgan looks,_ the voice mocks fondly. _If you ate like that, you'd blow up like a balloon. But you would feel full- the pain would stop. Can you hold back? Of course you can't! You're pathetic, really, a sad excuse for an FBI agent. You'll never have control if you keep looking at food that way... you're going to give in like the worthless pig you are._

"Still," Morgan sighs and sips his own coffee, which has only a dash of cream and no sugar. Thirty-Five calories. It may not seem like much, but to Reid, it meant the world. If he could hold himself hack from thirty-five measly calories, he could hold back from shooting up. "I was starting to think Prentiss was gonna shoot her shot if we hung around that guy any longer."

Spencer raised an eyebrow. "Shoot her shot?"

"Come on, kid! You gotta know what that means, unless you live under a rock.”

Heart pounding a bit faster, cracking at the edges as he avoided eye contact. If it weren't for the looming storm clouds outside the window, Spencer would had thought the world had darkened so considerably, that it was coming to an end. Gradually, rain drops began to pelt against the class of the cafe, startling a young woman who was typing furiously at her laptop near the glass. She blinked before shaking her head slightly and going back to her writing. The young doctor's eyes glance over her body, though not in attraction. He envied how thin her legs were, how her bones jet out and how high her cheekbones were. Because those were physical signs that she had control over her life. She lived under her own rules. She owned her body.

So, he makes it his monthly goal to beat her. She too stops by at the cafe every morning, but only now had he really gotten a good view of her. Starting now, he would compare himself to her to track his progress, and hopefully, he'd surpass her.

He hates these thoughts. He wished they would stop, but like the rain beating against the glass, they refuse to end.

"I don't."

Morgan laughed heartily and licked cream cheese from his thumb, bright eyes crinkling at the edges as he grins.

"It basically means that our girl Emily wanted to get down and dirty with our unsub. Well, before we found out he had killed eleven woman. They would have made a pretty cute couple, too, if you can look passed Harrison’s homicidal urges and blood fetish.”

Spencer doesn’t think that’s true. But then again, what does he know about love?

He eyes the bagel.

You have control, he reminds himself, and he is glad that it’s the daytime sky outside greeting him rather than the night. The last thing he needed was the fluorescent, fixed glare from the celestial bodies that stalked him. He already had one voice inside his head, he didn’t need visible onlookers as well. Morgan was watching him, but something about his warm gaze didn’t spark the same upsetting, uncomfortable chill through his bones.

_You have the control here, Spencer. Not Tobias, not Morgan, not the rain or the stars. You. It will be worth it in the end when the control shows off, the number goes down and your can feel the pain in your gut. The pain you deserve._

It’s better than ignoring the crave for dilaudid.

Because he knows if he can’t control himself around the drug, he’ll be met with blissful euphoria. But at the end of the road as he ignored the hunger pains grasping at his esophagus and begging him to just eat, there is pain. In that pain, their is a sense of solace that he is punishing himself for not being able to resist the beckoning of the narcotic. Starving is easy once you get the hang of it.

For whatever reason, Spencer’s stomach can’t always tell the difference between water and food.

The rain begins to pour down harder, whispering sweet nothings to Spencer as he looks out the window with a frown. Almost as if it sensed his pain and was mocking him, creeping down the glass as they watched on with glaringly large eyes. Shining with unadulterated glee as he struggled to keep his body from wobbling back and forth. As they took note of his constant dizziness, the frailness of his fingers and the cracking sores on his knuckles from forcing the putrid food out and the thinning spots in his hair, they stay quiet. As if they know they’ve gone to far.

Like how Alexa Lisbon used to eye him as he wakes the halls at their high school the day’s following the incident.

Guilty, but not enough to say sorry. Her actions weren’t eating her alive from the inside out. There wasn’t a burning hatred rippling under her skin, itching to be let out as the reality of what a harrowing person she was at heart. The macabre thoughts that crossed Spencer’s mind when he accidentally killed a big in his apartment seemed astounding compared to her grief at assaulting the twelve year old boy.

 _Alexa Lisbon watched the barely four-foot boy trudge down the hall, feet dragging behind him as he hugged himself, squeezing through the crowds of teenagers. He hardly made it three feet before a few members of the football team had tracked him down and cornered him, seemingly not satisfied with the pain they inflicted on him the_ day earlier.

_Harper Hillman stood next to her friend, arms wrapped tightly around her American History textbook as she stressed over her test in the next period._

_“I’m totally gonna fail, Lexi. What the hell am I supposed to do?! I don’t know anything about The Trail of Tears other than the fact that it was sad. Or-or something like that. I don’t even know!” Harper wailed, leaning her primped hair against the row of lockers behind her. A minute passed before she realized with a heavy heart, that Alexa wasn’t listening._ “ _Hello? Lexi. Alexa!”_

_“Oh!” Lisbon startled, turning towards her friend with a freighted look. “Sorry about that, Harper. What were you saying?”_

_“Well,” Hillman flicked her gaze to the small boy currently being dragged into the boy’s bathroom across the hall.The target of Alexa’s prior focus. “I was telling you about my history test that I’m totally gonna flunk, but forget it. You obviously have more important things on your mind. Why are you staring at Reid?”_

_Alexa sighed and rest heavily into her locker._

“ _I don’t know. He just... looked kinda down today. You think it’s because of yesterday? I mean, it wasn’t that bad. Was it?”_

_Harper’s perfectly plucked eyebrows furrowed. “Not at all. He’s just being a pussy. We barely touched the kid! Besides, he had it coming.”_

_Something about that last statement didn’t exactly sit right in Alexa’s head. She had to admit, poking fun at poor little Spencer Reid was fun, but going as far to say he deserved it was overk_ ill. _The kid didn’t really do much besides tutor other students, correct teachers and work. Hell, the kid didn’t even eat lunch (not that that would be a valid reason to bully him anyways)._

_Vaguely, the young girl could hear Spencer’s pleas from the bathroom... falling upon deaf ears._

_She frowned._

_“Maybe we should lay off him for awhile. He’s starting to look like that guy from last year. The one who, uh, y’know. Offed himself.”_

_A few students passing by looked at her, some with shock and others with disgust. She adverted her gaze, trying to drown out the sound of a twelve-year-old being beat to a pulp across the way._

_“No way,” Harper scoffed. “That freak’s way to smart to kill himself. Although, I wouldn’t be upset if he did. Just another worthless loser gone from the world.Am I right?”_

_It was then that Spencer emerged from the bathroom looking worse for wear. His nose was bleeding though he held a_ _handful of tissues tightly to the crimson stream. His bruises from last night were even darker, and though she tried not to look, Alexa couldn’t look away from the lacerations on the boy’s arms from being tied to the goal post. Her insides ached, but she made no move to comfort the boy, who had silent tears seeking down his cheeks._

_“Don’t say shit like that, Harper.”_

_The girl scoffed again._

“ _Whatever. Hey, hey! Spencer!” The young boy turned to the girl at the wound of his name. His eyes darkened as he realized who it was who caught his attention. He blanched, stepping back slightly. The students started to disperse into their classes, but a few started to gather around with growing curiosity. Maybe laughing at the sight of the small genius. “Spencer, why don’t you do us all a favor, and kill yourself! The world would be a better place without you in it, freak!” When Spencer ran, Alexa followed him eagerly._

_With her eyes anyways, as she stumbled towards her next class period._

No, Spencer though bitterly, she wasn’t guilty enough to say sorry.

Morgan followed his younger colleague’s gaze and smirked triumphantly. The thin man turned back towards the older, eyebrows furrowing at the man’s sly grin.

“What?”

“You’re checking that girl out over there, kid. I see you, I see you. Didn’t know Doctor Spencer Reid’s got game!”

The kid pulls a face, glancing at the girl by the window and then out into the rain. The blinding, foggy storm... his heart races. Even if Hotch didn’t judge him for his obvious fear, he wasn’t quite sure if Morgan would be the same.

“I wasn’t looking at her.”

“Oh,” Morgan’s smile dropped. He would have kept prying- would have joked around and joked about how the poor boy was just in denial, but something stopped him. The far-off, dark look in his bed friend’s eye threw him off.His profiling skills kicked into high gear as he looked over his little brother. Derek forced a smirk and chuckled dryly. “You’re just scared she won’t like you. Don’t worry,” He plans his next few words carefully. “Once you gain a few pounds, she’ll be all over you. Trust me, chicks dig boys that are bigger than them. And right now, you’re thin as a rail compared to her.”

Spencer shrugged. He was too busy talking to the rain. Telling it to fuck off, to leave him alone for once in his pitiful life.

“What’s wrong with how I look?”

The doctor already knows the answer, and he doesn’t have to have any PhDs to come to that conclusion. He can see how his bones jut out in unusual places, and how even under all the layers of clothing, they can see his concaving stomach. They can see the way he shakes like a leaf, bones rattling like a skeleton at even the smallest gusts of wind. His eyes folded in on themselves, no longer gleaming with curiosity and intelligence. Broken. His hair is falling out in chunks, his legs shake with every step and he nearly gags at the scent of food.

“Nothing, man,” Morgan grumbled. “But, aren’t you hungry? I mean, you don’t eat at breakfast and you haven’t been going to lunch with us wait her lately. Is there something you want to tell me?”

_He doesn’t really care. He just wants to see you break. Don’t do it, you pig. You’re worthless, so show him you aren’t a pathetic child and control yourself. Control yourself._

“I’ve been having headaches recently. I went to the doctor but they said it wasn’t anything serious. They just make me a little nauseated during the day, but I eat at night, I promise. You have nothing to worry about, Morgan.”

“If you say so,” The agent dismisses quietly. He finished his bagel and balls up the wrapper. “Hey, I’ve been, uh, meaning to talk to you about what happened last week as JJ and Will’s. About what Henry said about you leaving.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Leaving, Reid! Are you leaving?!”

In a way, he is. In a sick, twisted, sort of way, a part of him leaves everyday as his skin chases away any substances that made up his body. It eats away at his organs, digging through his flesh to get to the meaty inside, tearing and ripping him apart. He knows he’s dying. I’m fact, Reid thinks about it every night under the intense scrutiny of the stars, who drill deranged thought into his head when he least expects it. As the days pass in a blur, he feels himself stepping closer and closer to knocking of death’s door. To leaving forever.

A sick feeling settled in his empty gut at the thought of lying to his best friend.

“I don’t know,” He answers honestly.

“You don’t know? Where are you planning on going?”

Spencer looks into his eyes, fingers tracing invisible patterns on the outside of his coffee mug. Work starts in thirty minutes and time is ticking to slow for Reid’s liking.

You know, the genius wants to say, but he keeps lips zipped.

He is tired, so unbelievably exhausted, that he shuts his eyes and whispers ever so quietly: screw it.

“It’s getting really hard to live, Derek.”

For whatever reason, using his first name settles the fire burning in Spencer’s stomach. It makes him feel cold, thought it’s different from the biting chill he usually feels. It’s like settling the storm in his mind.

“What are you talking about, Spencer? I don’t understand why you would- how you could... talk to me, please. Tell me what’s wrong so I can fix it.”

“That’s just it,” The young genius whispers. “I’m not sure if you can.”

“You won’t know unless you try.”

The rain ceases. It goes quiet, and even though the nagging voice telling him he’s not good enough is hounding him in the background, the rain is no longer talking about him. It’s no longer spreading false rumors or poking fun at his expense. The rain is no longer trickling down the building’s walls just to sneak a peak at the man who was falling apart. He, at the moment, is no longer the hot commodity. The black tar, though thick and heavy around his head, thins out some as he gets lost in Morgan’s wide, caring eyes.

_He doesn’t care. Stop acting like he does!_

Shut up, Spencer counters. Morgan looks to honest, to pure to not actually care.

“I’ve been struggling, recently, with cravings. And I thought the only way to prove to myself that I could control it would be to find the one thing only I could dictate and take ahold of it. And I thought... eating. I control what I eat and I can choose to stop. It wasn’t supposed to get this bad, Derek, I-... now, I can’t stop.”

“Pretty boy. Spencer, if you’re ever struggling with your addiction you can always come to me, or even the team. You know? We always have your back, kid, no matter what. We love you, kid. Believe it or not. You can have control without obsessing over it.”

_Control? Control?! You have no control, you dumbass! If you can’t control yourself around a fucking piece of bread how the hell will you control yourself around heroin? You won’t._

“What if I can’t control myself and I-I spiral because I’m not strong enough?”

“Then I’ll be here to catch you. Always.”

When Reid leaves Morgan at the table, stunned at the abruptness of his departure, no one talks to him for the rest of the day.

Derek watches him from his own desk but doesn’t attempt to talk to him. Lunch rolls around and Garcia asks if Morgan will ask their genius to come, but the larger man merely shakes his head. Hotch stares at the conversation from above, eyes roaming around the bullpen before settling on the small heap of skin and bones at Reid’s desk. He shakes his head and goes back to his office; as much as he wants to care, he has his own problems to deal with first. 

Prentiss rants about a bad date she had last night and how she fears she’ll never find someone to love her. JJ mumbles about how fussy Henry had been recently. Rossi has a splitting headache from drinking himself to sleep.

They all have their own problems. Spencer knows this.

His heart falls to the deep confines of his chest and settles there until the end of the day, as he saunters home in a detached manner before gravitating towards his front door. Two baskets are on his doorsteps, one full of homemade cookies form his neighbor, the other from

Garcia, who left a note saying how worried she was for him. He throws it out.

That night, he settles into his bed and eats all thirty cookies as tearsswing from his eyes. He moves on to the cupcakes Garcia left in the basket and eats them all as well.

“Fuck you,” He mutters through the window as the stars watch him with judgmental glares. “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”

Ashamed and utterly disgusted that he had last complete control, he fumbles to the bathroom.

The wrenching lasts an hour. Morgan’s words echoes through his mind the whole time, and he doesn’t even try to drown them out. “You can have control without obsessing over it.”

Spencer wonders why he replaced one addiction with another in the first place.

“I’ll be there to catch you. Always.”

It’s quiet, aside from the star’s cruel taunting.

It never ends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As someone who suffers from an eating disorder, I really put my heart into this work so please be nice. I know I published this to the public so you can always say what you want but I’m begging you not to be too harsh. A lot of Reid’s feelings are my own. I want to thank you all for being so kind to me so far, you have all made be unbelievably happy. I can’t thank you enough :)
> 
> Feel free to comment, leave kudos and save for later. Lots of love- Lara <3


	4. Hidden Words Behind One’s Neck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s the loneliness that washes over him first. Then, it’s the weight of the many choices he had neglected to tend to resting heavy on his shoulders. It isn’t raining. The stars aren’t out... and yet the pain is still as prominent as ever. 
> 
> Spencer is beginning to think that he’s the problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This may be one of my favorite chapters from this whole series apart from the previous one. The ones I can relate to always hit the hardest. See the End Note at the bottom please :) thank you, loves! <3
> 
> Warnings:  
> -Referenced/Implied Child Abuse  
> -Overdose  
> -Suicidal Thoughts  
> -Suicide Attempt (??)

**Part four of: The Labyrinth of Stars**

_“What you choose also chooses you." -Kamand Kojouri_

In the end, there's always a choice.

Whether or not he makes the right one, well, he would have to spend a few long nights pondering just that. The thing about options is, there will always be pros and cons. One party will always be disappointed at the end of it all. Spencer was a people-pleaser, meaning choices were impossible.

He couldn't pick where he wanted to go for dinner when the team asked.

Choosing a new headboard for his bedroom would take weeks.

The poor genius would spend half an hour in the grocery store trying to choose between oat milk and almond milk because his mind simply wouldn't shut up about which had more health benefits.

Finding comfort in people who could confidently choose something without so much as a blink gave him hope that he too could be like them. Maybe, one day, his mind wouldn't be as loud and for once, he could simply choose what his gut was telling him to go with. Morgan, Garcia, Rossi and Prentiss were experts at such.

Spencer chose to wake up in the morning.

He chose to, despite how badly he wished he could just close his eyes and never have to open them again. Because he knows, deep down, that his friends will worry if he's late to work. And he knows that if they find him, dead in his apartment, that it would be unfair. So, every morning he is faced with the decision on whether or not he should pry his aching, exhausted body from the comfort of his mattress. Every morning, he does, and he gets ready and leaves. The pain doesn't lessen. His legs aren't any less tired than they would have been had he decided to stay in bed that day. The hurt in his heart isn't gone simply because he chose to face the world head on rather than hide from his despair.

A cloud follows him, as cliche as it may sound.

When he glances at all the others, relishing in their bright smirks and boisterous laughter, he wonders bitterly why this stupid rain cloud won't leave him alone.

The cloud doesn't disappear when he lands himself in the hospital for the second time in six months.

The only difference between this time and last time is, the first time, he wasn't alone. The team had gathered around at the call that he had been hospitalized. They were there. That's all that mattered because they sat next to his bed, held his hand and rubbed his back as he threw up through withdrawals. The empty space was all taken up, and for once in his life, he had felt wanted. They chose to stay with him, despite how angry they might have been, or how they could have been doing more important things than watch an adult male cry for hours on end. The room had felt warm. A soothing sense of full that Spencer can only compare to the hours after Thanksgiving when one's stomach is stuffed and the world feels orange.

The world feels orange.

 _Orange_.

The world feels blue, now. Cool, desolate blue. Because he's alone in this pristine, vacant hospital room surrounded by chirping machines that make him wanted to huddle under the covers and never come back out. It's all too blue with grey undertones, a hint of black and white here and there to accent how blatantly empty he feels. An endless void.

Spencer won't admit it, but he had been waiting. Waiting for the doctor to come in and announce that his friends were there to visit.

When that never happened, he cried.

There was nothing lonelier than being a drug addict without the drugs.

At least, with the dilaudid, he could feel something. He felt like he was actually living rather than going through the motions, succumbing to painful memories and intrusive thoughts.

With dilaudid, the world was yellow.

White is more accurate to how he feels now. Not sad, not depressed, but merely nothing. Hopeless, never ending expanses of white. No doors leading to the way out, to safety and happiness. No light at the end of the tunnel.

Like a butterfly with broken wings, Spencer wasn't quite sure he could live without his yellow. Yellow hadn't always dilaudid. It had once been having breakfast with Morgan every morning. It had been going over to JJ's for dinner every few weeks and babysitting Henry so Will and his wife could have a date night. Learning how to make the perfect pasta with Rossi, just the two of them, had been the highlight of his life, filling his heart with warmth. Teaching Hotch magic tricks to show Jack (not that the boy needed anymore reasons to think his father was the coolest dad in the world) had brought upon the biggest of smiles of his life. And when Prentiss and Garcia would binge watch Star Trek with him over a bottle of wine, he felt included in something smaller than he was. Something inclusive and hidden.

Yellow had been reading with his mother and the few days when his father would attempt to fix their relationship through chocolate milk and sour candies.

They all seem so much bigger than a glass phial.

So much more worth it. Anyone in there right mind would know that the pain of withdrawals wasn't worth the high. But awaiting the next outing with his friends was doable. It also involved a lot less puking. And yet, in the end, he knew if he were given the choice between reliving the happiest days of his life and hitting up, he'd go for the latter.

Because when a broken butterfly's best memories are from when he was a caterpillar, he'd still rather have his big, beautiful wings in the end.

The door opens, and he feels blue again. Cold.

"Doctor Reid?" The nurse patters in, a shy smile on her thin lips as she began removing his IVs with care. "You're being discharged now. I'll bring you the paperwork in a moment, alright? Any questions?"

Spencer gulps. "Was... my emergency contact notified?"

It's quiet, and for a brief moment, the genius thinks that the only reason he hadn't had company with time around was because they didn't know he was in trouble. A bright flicker of hope suddenly pops up, and he thinks that maybe once he got home, he wouldn’t have to worry about what color he was feeling anymore. Because he'd be surrounded you yellow, suffocated in it, and that would be fine by him. Smothered in orange until it burned him.

"Of course."

 _Shitty friends,_ a cruel voice tells him. _You have shitty friends. They don't care about you. We both know what will help you, and it certainly isn't them. You could have died for all they care._

It couldn't be true.

But then, if they were such good friends, how come he kept comparing them to the stars? Which, by the way, were the one thing in his life that made it harder than ever to simply live. Scrutinizing stares, stalking in the dead of night to see him fall apart, only to laugh at his pain. If he had such great friends, how could he even come close to comparing the two? That must meant, that in the end, he was the bad friend. And how couldn't he be? He was a beetle among butterflies; grey against yellow; a pathetic excuse for a man versus a mentally ill girl in a cafe. So, if he truly believed that he had horrible people supporting him... just what did that make him?

On his thinning back, he carries a sack full of river stones, small and smooth. They add up, weighing him down with choices he had procrastinated on picking.

Which was worth more- dilaudid, or his family?

He looks around his empty room.

Abandoned. Alone. It hits him hard then, like a semi-truck hurdling towards him. Laying down, Spencer curls into his side, coddling his frail arms around his concave stomach as tears prick his eyes.

It isn't the nighttime, and it isn't raining.

So, why did it still hurt?

"Am I going to have to participate in a psychological evaluation before I am discharged?"

The nurse's lips pout, her thin eyebrows furrowing softly into her wrinkled forehead.

"We weren't aware that your overdose was intended. I'll talk to your doctor and have him set up a meeting with our psychologist. We have a variety of treatment plans, Dr. Reid, so don't stress to much. Just rest here for awhile and I'll put a hold on those papers for you. Sit tight. Would you like anything to eat or drink while you wait?"

Spencer remembers his options from earlier. None of them fit under his five-hindered calorie budget for the day.

"Black coffee, please. If it's no bother."

"Not at all. That's what I'm here for," The nurse smiled and wrote something down on her clipboard. The younger man tries to see over her hand to see what exactly she had been scribbling, but it's fruitless. She holds it against her chest with a pained grin. "Be back in a jiffy, love."

An hour later, his doctor is discussing treatment options, but he drowns it out.

It wasn't a suicide attempt. It wasn't. If it were, he'd be dead. He'd be sure of it. Because if it had been a suicide attempt, and if his bedroom were truly as vacant as his hospital room, then there would have been no one to stop him. No one to think about to change his mind. No one to look in the eyes and realize that he couldn’t pass his pain on to them. It wasn't a suicide attempt. It was an escape to the stars.

For once in his life, he saw what they saw.

A grey, desolate world. One made of dying petunias that were too weak and too slow to swallow up all the water from the sky's crying. He saw the way the people that cared for him hadn't cared enough to come back. He saw how busy they were. Too busy to think about how much he was hurting- how close he was to living with the stars forever.

His backpack get's heavier. Another choice.

Go home and try again, or go to a facility and let someone else take his control.

_You need control. You have control. Forget them- they didn't care enough to even visit you after brushing hands with death! Open your eyes! If they cared, they'd be here._

So, Spencer goes home that day to an empty apartment, sitting just as he left it with drained dilaudid phials, a used needle and blood staining his bathroom floor from where he hit his head as he plummeted down. His books are askew on the bookshelf and he vaguely remembers toppling them over in a childish fit of rage. His eyes tremble in their sockets as they fall upon the sliding glass door leading out to his small balcony, home to many small plants (which he likes to consider his children, despite how absurd that sounds). A thought cross his mind- it would be so easy to slip off- but he ignored it dolefully in favor of heading to his kitchen.

Black coffee and sugar-free mints because stale rice and soy sauce sent curdles of uneasiness through his gut.

Guiltily, as if he had just committed the most atrocious of sins, he sips his luke-warm coffee on his worn leather couch and tries to dismiss how similar it felt to his childhood sofa. The sun is shining through the window- he misses the outline of greying clouds- and the genius' plants sway gently through the grazing win as it fluttered by. And yet, his heart still hurts. Could it be that the sun was in cahoots with the stars? No, something as pure and bright as the sun itself couldn’t be associated in such lying, cruel scoundrels. Yellow was supposed to be joyful and carefree, and yet it settled as one of the heaviest burdens on his shoulders. Spencer looks up at the sun through hooded eyelids and realizes with a dim sense of demoralization, that the sun was no longer a glorious shade of yellow, but a sad, sorry white.

His plants are no longer green and full of life, but a dismal grey, foggy and etched with black spots.

The doctor's watery eyes travel to his hands, wrapped tightly around the bitter mug of joe, and his mind draws a blank at the undead brown that stares back at him- blinding him. Veins run ramped along his thin wrists and up top his shaking hands. Corpse-like pale skin, detailed with fleshy purples and deep blue, cries with him, rather than laugh at him. It, too, is ashamed of how utterly dead they look. As dead as the girl from the cafe, that Spencer noticed hadn't shown up since he had run out on Morgan all those weeks ago. It terrifies him, glaring at his fingernails. They are chipping away, thinning and glowing a muted lavender. Bitten to oblivion and chew down to the bed, he wonders how he had let this go for so long, disgusted by the bloody, jagged nails he left due to his incessant nibbling.

The sun, shining as brilliantly as it does, cannot help how ashen and crest-fallen as he looks.

And so again, he asks himself: is it worth it?

Is the ecstasy worth it?

Is the jaw-dropping, knee-wobbling, needle-kissed oblivion worth losing his family, hair and skin over? Was it worth the starvation just to feel some type of control? Were the balding spots on his head from lack of nutrition worth the few hours of of relief?

Spencer hates himself for immediately thinking, yes.

Because he hates the way he shakes when he's gone too many hours without hitting up. And he absolutely despises throwing up bile and feeling unadulterated bouts of rage at everything and everyone in sight. The only way to keep those at bay, was to continue. It wasn't all that bad, he supposed. In the bathroom, where he slips the needle through his pliable skin, the stars can't stare through the windows to judge him. In that small bathroom, stained crimson and haunted by phantom pains, the world is purple. A mellow, bitter-sweet purple. The walls share secrets, but they never make it outside of the room, and certainly never to the stars or the rain (which Spencer is beyond thankful for). Unlike in his childhood house, his small apartment walls do not waste time whispering obscenities to one another, and the floorboards don't leak out false rumors, stringing across every footstep.

The coffee tastes like dirt, heavy on his tongue.

It wasn't a suicide attempt.

He wants someone to knock on his door. He doesn't care who, but his ears beg for the resounding 'knock' of a hard fist on wood. A sign that someone cared still; that he wasn't damaged goods made to be abandoned. No one does, in the end, and his heart feels as though a snake had constricted itself around it. Squeezing softly, cutting off circulation and leaving him better off dead.

The phone rings. It's the next best thing.

"Reid."

"Reid, it's Hotch," And of course it is. The older man sounded emotionless, as always. Spencer longs to go back to the day he fell apart in his boss' office just so he could cherish the feeling of having someone's arms wrapped around his shoulders. Grounding him. Showing him that despite the cruel lies his mind tries to tell him- someone loves him. Deep down, someone wants to wake up in the morning to see his face. "I take it you're home since you're answering your phone."

"I just got in a few minutes ago. Was there something you needed?"

Spencer knows it hurts Hotch to hear his most gentlest agent speak in such a tone. Blatantly mean. A horrible, burning red.

"You can't be serious," Spencer knows he's in for it now. If only he had learned to shut his mouth like his father taught him. If only Hotch could have beaten him into submission like his father did. He technically did, Spencer remembers. The L.D.S.K case. It still haunts his dreams up to this day. "I get a call- at work, mind you- that one of my agent's heart has stopped not once, but twice, due to a heroin overdose, and you have the audacity to ask me if I need something. Is making sure you're alive too much to ask?! Is wanting to hear your voice because I thought I'd never hear it again such an insane request?"

Spencer wants to argue that the hospital almost definitely told the older man that the doctor had pulled through, but he bites his tongue.

"No."

_Hit up. Do it. You know you want it. Hotch doesn't give a crap about you, so don't listen to him. He's just pitying you. Hang up and do it again, feel the rush again, except this time... finish the job. The pain will go away forever and you'll realize that it was worth it. Do it. You pathetic junkie._

"Then I suggest you shut your mouth and let me speak. Do you know how badly you scared us? We were so sure that we were going to lose you. Morgan cried, Spencer- cried and collapsed to the ground sobbing because he thought you were dead. Do you know how painful that is? Just the thought of losing you makes me want to rip my damn hair out! Do you understand me?! Why the- the hell would you do that to us?"

Hotch's voice breaks, and his voice never breaks.

It wasn't a suicide attempt. He wasn't being selfish. He was just trying to end his suffering for a few extra hours than usual. He just wanted to sleep a full night without being plagued by nightmares or bombarded by self-hatred. He wanted to see yellow, and pink and green as opposed to the same old blue, grey and white. Was they too much to ask? Spencer supposed asking for happiness, if only for a split-second, was too much.

_Selfish prick, that's what you are. They're so angry with you, you might as well do it again and ensure your heart doesn't start back up. They'd want that. They'd probably do it themselves if they had the guts._

"I didn't do anything to you," Spencer says breathily, in disbelief. "I just wanted my pain to stop! Have you ever thought about that?"

"Listen here, Spencer. I've told you this once and I'll tell you again: you may be the smartest person in the room, but you're not the only one. Think about what the hell you did, and fix it."

"You weren't even at the hospital! You don't give a damn about me!"

Hotch is quiet, and the anger inside the younger man sparks a flash of red in his otherwise dismal world. He can't say it's any better than the grey.

"You need to choose," That word. That blasted word is worse than any rainstorm, any stroke of lightning and every single roll of thunder that ever plundered the overcast skies. It was as painful as his foot breaking under the force of Charles beating him. It haunted him the same way the dilaudid tainted and was always at the back of his mind; stalking. Because Spencer can not choose, and he knows that if he doesn't, he'll lose the only people that ever bothered to give him the time of day. He can't decide if he's okay with that. Another choice overlooked. "Because we aren't going to stand by and watch you slowly kill yourself. None of us deserve that. We don't want to watch you wither away knowing there isn't anything we can do to stop you. You don't want help, but you want us there. We won't watch you die. Not again."

Spencer wishes he hadn't been revived.

When he looks up into the sky, he longs to be there, weightless and floating into peaceful oblivion. A world without pain or pressure to choose the right decision. The doctor wishes with every bone in his body that he could die so he can see Tobias again, to thank him and to apologize for what he had done. Somedays, he considers laying in bed until he starves, or dies of dehydration because only a person as selfish as him deserves such a slow and painful death.

The backpack slips from his shoulders and the rocks come tumbling out, scratching his floors and leaving his shoulders sore.

"I'm sorry, Hotch... I'm so sorry."

"Sorry doesn’t fucking cut it! I think I've heard enough," For a moment, Reid thinks he'll be hung up on, shut out from the closest thing he had to a father and left to dry out in the blistering sun. However, he never heard the tell-tale tone of the receiver coming to a close. Only Hotch's breath, soft and pained through the speaker. "You have no idea how much we care for you, do you, Spencer? How much we love you? How much it hurts us inside to watch you fall apart like this?"

"How could you?" Spencer's lips wobble in poorly consoled sobs as a few regretful whimpers escape. "How could you love me when I've been so selfish? So weak?"

"You're family!"

Hotch doesn't cry. He doesn't. So when the younger man hears the chief yell into the speaker followed by broken cries muffled by what Spencer could only assume was a hand, he isn't quite sure what to do.

"I'm selfish. I don't deserve to-to have a family. Gideon was right to leave!"

"No," Hotch mewls. "No, he was a coward. He had no right to leave you with nothing but a note. I know Jason Gideon and that man isn't weak, but leaving like he did made me rethink everything I ever knew about him. You didn't deserve to be abandoned."

"That's a lie," Spencer hisses. "If that were true, then my dad would have never left. He would have never-..."

"Spencer, what you're father did to you wasn't your fault. I thought we went over this."

"How can you say that?" The younger man cried and he swore he could feel the wind pushing his jaw up and down, pushing the words out for him. Taking his control away. "He told me to stop. He told me everyday what he hated about me and I couldn't just stop. I couldn't just change for him to make him proud. How can you say it wasn't my fault?"

Fathers do not hurt their sons. Spencer wants to believe it so badly, he'd spend days convincing himself that William truly did love him in the end- that all those days of criticism and expression of distaste were simply worry for his well-being. He felt the dirt in his soul. The poison seeping through his veins. The utter filth that plagued his very being.

_Hotch would know. He's been through it a hundred times, you've only been through it once. He knows you deserve it. How does it feel to be some dirty, pathetic freak? William was smart to punish you from the start._

"When we rescue child victims of abuse, would you ever blame them for what happened to them?"

Spencer is an honest man. A smart, truthful person who was, at times, incapable of lying.

"No, of course not."

"Then why is it any different when the victim is you?"

And the honest truth was, it shouldn't be. Deep down, somewhere in his twisted intestines, he knows it's the same scenario. But his mind refuses to connect the dots, influenced by the cruel laughter of the overhead, sparkling lights that remind him how he wasn't helpless like the others victims had been. He had his intelligence, his pure genius and eloquent way of speaking to get himself out of trouble. One thing most children lacked: a voice. Reid was afraid of William, but he would not back down to the man who made his life a living hell by simply reversing out of their cracked driveway, never to return again. He had the option to talk himself out, or the choice to leave the room when he sensed his father's anger levels rising.

Instead, he chose to stay.

It's that day, that Spencer learns to listen to his flight or fight response. More specifically, he is shown that if his response is to fight... to ignore it. It would only end in suffering.

Can you be any more pathetic? Running away from all your problems and straight into a worthless drug when the going gets tough. Would Morgan run away form his problems? No, he faces them head on because he isn't as feeble-minded as you. Not even JJ would try to escape her mind as poignant as you do.

"Because I had a choice. They didn't. And I-I knew what the right choice was, and I still... I didn't-... why didn't I just leave the room? Why did I choose to-to antagonize him? If I had just chosen-..."

"That doesn't excuse his actions."

"No, but it justifies them."

Hotch sighs over the speaker. Reid can imagine him now, sat hunched over hims desk, cradling his head in his hands as the stress of having to deal with his subordinate- turned-drug addict overdosing again. Selfish, Spencer chastised himself, but as he lets his own words sink in... he finds that he can't bring himself to care. His skin itches. He wants to hit up.

"I didn't know you went back to dilaudid."

"I never left it."

It's hushed, a few ruffling sounds in the background of Hotch's suit shifting. "I think it's best if you take some time off to gather yourself. You scared us all beyond our wits today, and we all agreed that a break would be in your best interests."

"You think I'm an invalid?"

"I know you're an invalid," Cold and steely and just so Hotch-like, Spencer finds himself wishing the man were here to hold him. Even if it were for the last time. Because the genius can feel tears pricking his eyes and for the love of all things good! Why couldn't he think?! His mind was an ever-growing labyrinth of selfish, twisting and destructive thoughts swirling into a single tornado reeking havoc on his psyche. "As an agent, you know better than anyone that a person in your condition would be a liability on the field. Maybe even a danger. It's safer for everyone, including you, that you step away for awhile, or perhaps indefinitely. Because until I can trust you with taking care of yourself, I cannot trust you around my team. At the moment, you'd only be a burden to us. Do I make myself clear, Reid?"

_Liability._

_Liability._

_Liability._

No. No, this couldn't be true. He couldn't be a liability. He had substance- he had worth! He could work just as well as he could before and he was definitely not a liability, of all things. Hotch couldn't possibly think that were true.

A tap on his window.

 _No_.

Another, and another. And it's raining. Spencer shakes his head slowly, not bothering to wipe away the fitful tears that began to cascade down his flushed cheeks, dropping haphazardly off his chin. Hands quivering, the doctor gazed blankly out the window as the sky darkened into a horribly overcast apocalyptic scene. His flowers are soaking up the water gratefully. Spencer forgot to water them. He never forgets. It's raining and the man takes it as a sign to give up; to admit defeat.

"It's safer for everyone, including you, that you step away for awhile, or perhaps indefinitely..."

Leaving the BAU would be like throwing down the towel. It would be like raising the white flag and succumbing to the violent thoughts raging wars between his ears and behind his eyes. Spencer is drowning, neck-deep in a pool of tar with no edge, the liquid steadily rising as he struggled to remain at the surface. However, the tar is far to weighty and thick for him to claw out of. It fills his lungs and settles like a rock in his gut as he swallows it with no hope of regurgitating it back up.

Spencer enjoyed it far more when he was merely drowning in rainwater.

The fight has disappeared. The will has vanished. The means to keep going had been buried beneath the rubble that was once his life. 

It wasn't my fault, Reid wants to say, but he keeps his mouth shut.

"Crystal."

A sad sigh echoes through his ears as the rain picks up. Laughing gleefully at his pain, the water begins to flood his balcony, seeping unto the doorframe and slowly rotting the wood from the inside out. Another choice. Use his money on rent, repairing the water damage, or dilaudid. Unconsciously, the choice had already been picked, but he likes to humor himself with the anxious thoughts that keep him up in the middle of the night. It makes him feel something.

"Good," Spencer waits for him to hang up. “And I want you to know that we won’t help you endless you want it. We can’t. I don’t want what happened to Elle to happen to you.”

“Elle was stronger than me,” Spencer says, steadfast.

“You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for. But you’re a smart kid, Spencer, and I know I don’t have to tell you this, but sometimes things are just better when they’re left in the past. Including the BAU.”

Spence blinks once. Twice. Then, he considers pointing out the fact that they could have saved Elle if Hotch had bothered to care enough, or if Gideon tried harder. Elle wasn’t hopeless, or completely lost when she left, but merely broken. Reid, in the other hand, was beyond help, far too lost within his addiction to even consider treatment. Nothing brought happiness anymore besides the drug he had grown to cherish so much. In hindsight, he should have quit a long while ago, when he first realized how weak he had become. It doesn’t matter anymore.

Hotch is right.

“I can’t leave. I don’t want to.”

“I know you don’t want to, but you have to think about the big picture, Reid. What’s more important, your mental health or your job?”

Another choice. “My mental health relies on my job.”

“No,” Aaron answers sharply, and Reid imagines his cold eyes staring him down from across his desk, pinning him down. Frozen in fear, Spencer closes his eyes and shakes the image from his mind. Hotch’s eyes are too similar to William’s. “Your job relies on your mental health. And right now, you aren’t fit to work. End of story.”

“Yessir,” Spencer growls through gritted teeth.

“I’m disappointed in you, Spencer,” And doesn’t that just hurt the worst. Worse than the withdrawals, or the feeling of Charle’s hands on his body. Worse than being berated by celestial bodies. Worse than the prick of a needle through his inner elbow. “I expected better from you.”

“I’m sorry, Hotch.”

"And Spencer... one last thing."

"What is it?" The boy has to bite his lip to keep from screaming into the speaker about how he couldn't help himself alone; that he needed people there to support him. Then, he remembers that they had been there from the beginning, and he was the one pushing them away. They would have been there this time, had they not been so incredibly tired of dealing with his problems. This was his fault, and he criticizes himself for ever doubting that.

"You terrified me. I thought you were going to die this time and it would have been all my fault. I'm just... glad your alive, Reid."

Spencer wishes he could say the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s been forever since I’ve updated! I apologize from the bottom of my heart, everyone. I was going through a rough patch in my life. However, I am back in the swing of things and ready to write once more, so dear not, for the last chapter shouldn’t take too long to come out (hopefully). Anyways, my life has been rather eventful lately. I recently found out that my soccer team is talking about me behind my back so that’s... cool? I guess. Here’s the rundown, I feel like I’m rather loud and obnoxious at soccer because I’m a naturally shy and antisocial person, and I’m going to be honest, my team are my only friends. I’m not kidding. Anyways, I’m kinda upset. I digress, tell me about how you’re all doing in the comments, if you’d like :) I love hearing from you guys and I’m here to offer support and advice! Thank you so much for all the love on this work, it warms my heart!!!
> 
> Feel free to comment, leave kudos and save for later! Lots of love- Lara <3


	5. The Best Days Have a Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was supposed to be a good day. The sun was shining, the moo was right and the weight had lifted from his chest. Two weeks sober. It was supposed to be a good day. But even the good days have an ending. 
> 
> Too bad his ended before the twenty-four hours were up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, I’m in love with this chapter, so I really hope you all like it to. Heed the warnings, however. Especially if you’re a Hotchner fan! Also, this chapter takes place two months after the previous chapter and about a week prior to the next work in the series. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Warnings:  
> -Suicidal Thoughts  
> -Implied/Referenced Eating Disorder  
> -Mentioned Drug Addiction  
> -Angry!Hotch, Mean!Hotch

**Part Five of: The Labyrinth of Stars**

_“Even the worst days have an ending, and the best days have a beginning.” -Jennifer Coletta_

The blinds are open. 

The blinds are open, and the sun is slipping through the thin slots between each wooden panel, leaving a pattern on the floor and over the duvet. A gentle warmth settles over the entirety of the small room, leaving even the hidden corners seeped in yellow sunlight. It isn’t sweltering, but merely the feeling of a wool blanket over freshly washed linen sheets, or warm milk oozing down a sore throat, smooth and condoling. The cool, mauve color of the walls soaked up the protruding sunlight like a flower on a hot summer’s day, spreading the heat throughout the muckrake floorboards and drywall.

A body lay between said comforter and sheets, lithe legs sweeping over the cool fabric before curling up and over his stomach, effectively positioning himself in a small ball. Savoring the warmth, the figure’s back swoops over his knees, arm tucked under his forehead as he nuzzles the crooks of his eyes into his skin.

Smacking his lips at the dryness, he huffs and lets his body relax further into the mattress.

A velvety, supple sound rouses him once more.

Sitting up, the young man wipes at his concave eyes, the pads of his fingers rubbing tiredly across the harsh lines beneath the sockets. Another nearly sleepless night.

Mumbling softly to himself, the man looked around his empty bedroom, squinting at the sun cascading in through the window panes. The sound is oddly quiet, through it echoes faintly through the apartment, bouncing off the walls and traveling by foot across the floorboards. Closing his eyes, the man tries to remember where exactly he had heard the melody before; however, his memory, as always, refused to fail him as he instantly recognized the music as one of his mother’s old records. Her favorite one: Symphony No.6- Beethoven. Imperviously, it was his favorite as well and he couldn’t help but allow a small smile to rest lazily on his lips at the sound. More importantly, at the memories it brought along. Days where his mother would be full of life, as she had been before her illness took control. The vague time before he had been born.

The sun wasn’t as bothersome as he thought. Leaning outside his window to find nothing but an empty street and not a cloud in sight. He let the smile stay, his heart feeling unusually light in his chest. A feeling that wasn’t necessarily unfamiliar, but merely rare and cherished.

Prying himself from bed, Doctor Spencer Reid promised himself that it would be a good day.

Wobbling haphazardly around the room, he groaned at the stiff feeling in his joints and back, but otherwise continued to move along; brushing the morning breath away in the connected bathroom, washing his face and ruffling the greasy hair that lay upon his head like a mop. He had to remember to take a shower today, seeing as though he hadn’t take one since two days prior.

Spencer shuffles out of the bedroom, determined to get his hands on a cup of coffee when he was met with the face of a rather curious and adventurous senior agent.

Rossi waltzed around the small living room, observing the rotating record player and running the tips of his fingers across the abundance of books lining the ceiling-high book shelves. The older man hummed along to tune, though it sounded as though he had never heard it before and was simply going with the flow rather than reciting from memory. Spencer watched from the entrance to the room, eyes wide and indifferent as he held back an agitated yelp at the man fumbling with his organized books. The doctor was also quite peeved off at the fact that Rossi felt he had the right to play Spencer’s mother’s favorite records... or any of his records, for that matter. The genius swallowed down his anger and frowned softly.

“Uh, good morning.”

Rossi whipped around, eyebrows reaching his forehead as a fond smile rose to his lips.

A smile that reminded Reid, almost painfully, of Gideon. Though the young scholar tended to avoid the word ‘hate’ for obvious reasons, he couldn’t help but feel that he was slowly beginning to despise David Rossi. The man not only took Gideon’s place, but he had the audacity to act as thought he weren’t on a team at all. Spencer couldn’t believe the others hadn’t already complained to Hotch about the man’s selfishness.

_Maybe because they aren’t weak like you. They can handle some hustling, unlike you, who bursts in the tears at anything remotely offensive. Pathetic, really._

No- it was supposed to be a good day.

However, he supposed, he was allowed to miss Gideon, even on the better days. The man was one of the only things that kept him sane, as even the days simply spent on the senior profiler’s couch were days that went by with a quelling, embracing warmth that spread through his body like some self-righteous virus. Spencer would give anything to go back to those days, when the most he had to deal with was making sure his friend’s didn’t fall apart rather than worrying about whether or not he would survive the night.

He had made the mistake of ignoring Elle, and refused to make the same mistake twice.

Back to the matter at hand; Rossi was in his living room, playing his mother’s precious records, browsing around his book shelves and- he had just observed- drinking his specialty coffee.

“Morning, Reid. I found your emergency key under the welcome mat so I thought I’d just let myself in.”

Spencer felt his fingers twitch.

Sparing a glance outside, he found nothing but the same sunlight that plagued his bedroom. A halo-like glow enveloped the room as he found his rage diminishing. It was his own fault, really, for choosing a stupid place to leave his extra key.

“And what exactly are you doing here? Isn’t it our day off, or did I get my days mixed up?”

Rossi huffed a dry laugh, picking up his mug- Reid’s mug, dammit- and taking a long sip.

“Highly unlikely, kiddo, with a memory like yours. But no, you’d be perfectly fine if we didn’t catch a case earlier this morning. Pack your bags, we’re heading to Florida!”

“Great,” Reid mumbled, wiping the sleep from his eyes. “Florida. Why is it always Florida?”

And to think, today was supposed to be a good day!

“It’s not all that bad,” Rossi suggested. “The sun’ll be shining, it’ll be warm, and best of all, we might even see some hot ladies in bikinis. Besides, we get to stop a serial killer. A win-win situation, if you ask me.”

Spencer tried to smile. He really did, but all that came out was a bitter sort of grimace that stained his shadowed face.

The sun is shining, but when he looks outside and watches that big, yellow star staring down at him, he can’t help but feel a nauseating sensation settle in his gut. A melancholy stone wedges itself between his ears, fogging his vision and jumbling his thoughts until all he could focus on was getting back in bed and sleeping the day away. He shakes the feeling off quickly.

Two weeks sober. 

Good day. Two weeks sober.

“Why didn’t I get a call about the case?” Rossi stepped towards the record that was nearing its end, gentle fingers lifting at the needle as the large disk slowed to a stop. The man flipped the record skillfully with a low whistle. “Hey! Be careful with that, please. It was my mother’s.”

Rossi smirked. “I know, kid. Hell, I’m not a monster, y’know.”

“I’m well aware.”

The silence isn’t awkward, and for whatever reason, Spencer doesn’t ask Rossi to leave as he gets ready. Even as the man stands in his living room listening to old, scratchy records while he showers and dresses, he has no desire to kick the older man out. David takes out a few books and places then directly back into the correct place, almost as if he knew Reid was watching him, ready to pounce at the smallest of errors.

Spencer, as he brushes his teeth (for the second time) in a rushed manor and runs a shaky hand through his hair, reminds himself that it is supposed to be a good day.

And so, he smiles at Rossi when he comes out of his bedroom, ready to leave.

The case starts off well enough. Five people killed within the span of two weeks, their wrists slashed horrendously with little notes tucked into the folds of the gashes, all stating the same thing. Reid has read the notes over and over again despite having the words engraved in his memory at first glance. It was getting harder to ignore the painfully obvious reasons for the murders- the scarred elbows, the gaunt features on each victim, the way they had no close contact at to any of their family members and virtually no friends. He wanted to tell them- it would help the case; catch the killer. But a deep, burning pain wretched at his heart at the thought of expressing that the unsub was killing to... “remove the filth from this world and rid the sufferers from their pain.”

Spencer wished someone had done that for him, when he still ached to feel the prick of a needle against his skin.

Two weeks clean. Two weeks clean.

_You’re only two weeks in, and one of those weeks was spent hunched over a toilet resisting the urge to hit up. You got clean all on your own, only solidifying the idea that no one truly cares about you. There’s nothing wrong with giving in again- hell, who’s to say you deserve to call yourself “clean.” You’ve never even been close to “clean.” Nothing but a pathetic loser. Give up. No one cares._

It’s only Hotch, Rossi and him in the conference room at the precinct. He had been giving the job of completing the geological profile, but the itch at the back of his skull is urging him to tell them the truth. He wants desperately to connect the dots for them. The professional side of his brain was telling him that it would be in everyone’s best interest if he just told them the simple fact that would connect the victimologie. He could save people.

But shame grasped him tightly, dragging him into a downward spiral.

Four days into the case, and he finally realizes just how hard it is to get over an addiction. All he can think about is the heroin running ramped through his veins, sending him into endless euphoria. A pleasure he would give his life to feel again, if only for a brief moment. The genius tried to replace the feeling over overwhelming happiness and peacefulness with less harmful actions, but nothing hit quite the same as the drug.

Spencer has chewed his lips so much, he had grown accustomed to the taste.

And the boy would give so much to simply steal a star from the nighttime sky and call it his own. To feel the bitter heat emitting from the celestial body and cradle it close to his chest, just so he could feel anything but the sour coldness vexing his utter being. Reid would travel through hell and back to even catch a glimpse of the man he used to be; so full of life and curiosity; buggy-eyes and rambling lips; bright skin and energetic legs. For, if he could just see what he used to be, what he longed to end up as, maybe he could become that man again. Maybe then, his friends wouldn’t simply tolerate him. They would stick around for him, not because they felt obligated to. Possibly, his father would learn that he had been wrong all along... Spencer was normal.

But the fear of choosing a star that wasn’t bright enough was overwhelming, so he sticks to gazing at them instead.

_Imagine yourself... laying bloody in a dark alleyway, wrists slit to oblivion. Imagine some random stranger passing by and seeing your lifeless body huddled behind a dumpster. They’d scream and call the police and your team would see you as you are. A dirty, selfish junkie. But you would like that, wouldn’t you? That’s the sick reality, isn’t it? Imagine your funeral. Would anyone cry? Would anyone even show up?_

Good day. Two weeks clean. The sun.

Spencer wants to tell them so badly, it hurts. The victims were being killed because the unsub knew they were suffering from addiction and wanted to take away their pain. He had a savior-complex. He wanted to help people, possibly even a drug addict himself. It would help the profile to tell them, but his mouth suddenly feels as dry as a desert and his lips clamp shut as if they had been sewn crudely with barbed wire. Hotch would be angry if he kept this a secret. Even Morgan, who wasn’t even the Unit Chief, would be furious at him for being so unprofessional about the whole situation.

The sun shined brighter in Florida. Almost to bright. A harsh, blinding light that makes it so hot, Spencer can feel the rubber on his converse threatening to melt right there and then.

“We’re missing something,” Hotch’s stern voice pulls Spencer from his arbitrary thoughts. No one truly cared about how bright the sun was, or how many calories he had yesterday- which he wouldn’t admit anyways-, or how he had grown fond of the taste of coppery blood from biting his lips to harshly. People overlook butterflies who have lot their wings for those who harbor magnificent, vibrant ones because they are more appealing to look at. No one has to worry about the beautiful butterflies. No one loses sleep over the fluttering butterflies who look angelic against flowering buds. No one has to forget there own problems to take care of a butterfly that has wings. Spencer has to remind himself; the team doesn’t care if he’s losing weight, or if he’s been distant as of late. “I’m not sure what, but something here doesn’t add up. The notes, the profile, the murders. It’s almost as if he’s tricking us- leading us one way then going the opposite direction.”

Rossi sighed and rubbed at his wrinkled forehead, resting heavily into an office chair at the round table. “How can he just not have a reason? Every unsub has a reason- logical or not. Justified or not.”

“We’ve found nothing with the geological profile, nothing at the crime scenes and nothing at the coroners office. The notes are the on it piece of evidence we have to go off of and they don’t even make any sense.”

“The victimologie is all over the place... different ages, genders, ethnicities and backgrounds. Could it be that he just, I don’t know, hates people?”

Hotch shook his head slowly and glanced towards his youngest agent, eyebrows quirking you at the pained expression on his face.

“Reid? Do you have anything to add?”

_Yeah, Reid, do you? You’re practically giving yourself away! Tell them! Tell them how you relate to the victims because your a druggie with an addiction to the same fucking drug you were drugged with while kidnapped by a psycho. They’d just love to hear about how weak you truly are. Open their eyes and tell them already!_

Spencer shuffled awkwardly, caping the marker he had been using to map the profile and instead choosing to fiddle with it. His heart was racing a mile a minute, hands sweaty as he gulped.

“Well, let’s look at the notes again. They all say the same thing, diction and calligraphy pointing to that of a man. ‘What I do is for the good of the people. For the good of those in pain and those to weak to survive in this world. I do what I do to remove the filth from this world and rid the sufferers from their pain. Don’t deny me the right to help those who cannot help themselves.’ No signature,” Reid stared from memory. “Are we sure the victims aren’t prostitutes?”

Rossi shook his head. “We’ve checked, kid. Criminal records, bank records, family records. They’re all clean.”

How ironic, Spencer thought bemusedly. The youngest man turned back to the board, eyes gazing down the map in search of anything that stood out as peculiar. Tell them... he decides he should. It didn’t even occur to him to keep his mouth shut as he began to ramble.

“Wait a minute! Look here,” The genius pointed to a spot on the map in mock surprise, both Hotch and Rossi leaning in to get a better view. “The first murder took place in the alley beside this club, the second one took place a mile East towards where the victim’s apartment complex was located. The third took place a few blocks North towards the nearest bus station and the fourth and fifth near the victim’s taxi cab. Wh-What I’m trying to say is, our unsub has to be killing people who either work at their club, or are customers. Our unsub could even be an employee there. The, uh, the unsub would have to have been around the victim along enough to spot something that sets them apart from the majority- something that would make them unclean in his eyes,” Reid licked his lips. “Maybe they... maybe they’re drug addicts of some sort.”

Hotchner’s eyes narrowed. “That would make sense. Reid, why didn’t you bring this up earlier?“

“Well, I-I... you... it was just a theory and I didn’t want to say anything about it if it wasn’t valid or-...”

“You knew all along?”

“Uh, yes. But I wasn’t entirely sure if the idea made sense, so I-“

“Shut up, Reid. And listen, because you might be a genius but I’m not an idiot and I won’t listen to your excuses. We’re on a time crunch and you felt the need to hide useful information from the team?”

Spencer’s face falls. The excitement and jubilance that had once inhabited his hazel eyes was immediately shot down, being replaced with a vacant, lugubrious stare that was a far cry from the past look plastered on his face. For a moment there, he had felt like himself, his true self. He enjoyed the child-like joy that came from figuring out the riddle or finding a solution to the problem. A thought crosses him that maybe they thought he was so far gone, that they simply didn’t want any side of him. They just wanted him gone.

“I-I hadn’t- I didn’t notice until- I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter. We need to get to that club and question the staff. Rossi, call Prentiss and Morgan and tell them to come back to the station so we can fill them in. Hopefully JJ will be done with the media by then. Rossi, you, Morgan and Prentiss will investigate the club. JJ and I will talk to some of the prostitues and homeless to see if they’ve seen any suspicious individuals lately. Reid...” The boy perked up. “You stay here. You’re off field duty until further notice for obstruction of a federal investigation. Be thankful I don’t do worse.”

“Ob-Obstruction?!”

Hotch leaned in, cutting Rossi off from their conversation and causing Spencer to lean back slightly. “I’m not stupid, Reid. You knew all along and you neglected to tell us. Sometimes, I think you forget that you’re surrounded by profilers. I knew you were holding something back since the moment you saw the bodies and read the note. Now, I suggest you listen and do as your told before you piss me off even more. Understood?”

Spencer held his breath, wishing desperately that he could simply fade from existence right there and then.

“Yes, sir.”

He will never forget the betrayal and fury in Hotch’s eyes, or the way Rossi’s whole being dims into regret and realization. As if he wishes he could take back his kindness from a few days ago when he drove Spencer to the jet.

_You ruin everything. This is proof of that. Hotch hates you now, and Rossi dislikes you even more! You weren’t even trying to get the guy to like you and you’re already on his bad side. Too bad you scared Gideon away- he’d know what to do. You’re so lost without him. That’s humiliating, don’t you think? You can barely go through a whole day without thinking about the old man and he probably doesn’t give the thought of you a second of his day. I wonder what he’d think if he saw you now. Disappointed, probably. You’re existences is embarrassing. You’re nothing but a worthless, useless freak!_

Good day. Two weeks sober. The sun. Gideon.

Spencer thinks about the stars as he is sat, essentially grounded, in one of the office chairs. They must be bored of him now. Perhaps, they’ll shine for someone else after this whole situation cools off.

His head hurts.

The team catches the unsub without him after witnessing another murder in action. The victim doesn’t survive and the sheer anger in Hotch’s eyes suggests that the man blames Reid for that. The younger agent keeps his head low, his eyes one the ground all the way to the jet. Sitting in the back corner of the plane, legs up and tucked close to his chest, his knees under his chin, he stares out the window with glassy, empty eyes. Rossi sits across from him, silent and unmoving.

“I’ve never seen him that angry at you before,”

The man whispers. Hotch is asleep, thankfully. “Except for the Owen Savage case, which was justified anger, you know.”

“I know,” Spencer whispers, though he wishes he could growl so Rossi would leave him alone. “You don’t have to remind me.”

“Look, kid,” The older man sighs. “You need to understand that what you did today goes against everything we stand for. We’re supposed to be the selfless ones. The heroes. And today, you put yourself before the victims and it ended in a casualty. Hotch doesn’t think he’s getting through to you and for whatever reason, thinks I can.”

A fire engines itself in Reid’s heart, angry and acerb. Vexed tears gather in his eyes as he frowns, eyebrows knitting together harshly. “You aren’t Gideon. You can’t replace him. You’re nothing like him and you’ll never be half the man he was.”

Rossi mimics the younger’s expression. “Gideon ran away. I respected him; he was my best friend for many years and yet, he left. What does that say about him?”

“That he needed help.”

“ _No_. That he was too _afraid_ to ask for help. And right now, when I look at you, I see Gideon. I don’t want you to turn out like him, kid, and I’m no psychic, but you’re already getting crows feet just like him, kiddo.”

Rossi’s smile is contagious. Spencer huffs and wipes the tears from his eyes with a grin.

The older man chuckles warmly and shakes his head. Once they quiet down, he jerks forward, eyes softening just like Jason’s used to whenever he looked at Spencer. As if the boy were his own. The genius’ laughter returns to cruel, hushed sobs. “I miss him.”

“I know,” Rossi whispered, his own tears gathering to his eyes. “I do too. Promise me one thing, Spencer?”

“Anything.”

“Stay strong. Stronger than even men like Gideon. Don’t let these little things get into your brain and tell you lies. I haven’t been here long, kid, but I know one thing for certain. These people love you. They want to see your face everyday. They care more than anyone else and I can see it in your eyes that you don’t believe that. So, please, just promise me you’ll stay strong. For us?”

“I-... I promise.”

Spencer realizes all too late that they weren’t asking too much... they were simply asking the wrong person.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, everybody. Here’s the deal... I’m going to therapy now :) so, writing may be more difficult as I’m in a dark place right now. Luckily for you all, writing is one of my favorite things to do and makes me happy, so hopefully more works will be out soon. My soccer situation was worsened and I was basically told I should I kill myself so... I’m not exactly okay right now. I want you to know that I love you all and i want to thank you for all the kindness and support you have shown me. You all make living worth it. Thank you. I love you all more than apple pie and ice cream!! ;)
> 
> Feel free to comment, leave kudos and save for later! Lots of love- Lara <3


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